


Behind the Lens

by rhysiana



Series: Derek Hale: Landscape Photographer [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Photographer Derek, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 01:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9525836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: Derek is a reclusive landscape photographer. Stiles helps hang his new show at Lydia's gallery and finds himself really hoping he'll get to meet the artist.





	

**Author's Note:**

> In the proud tradition of “anything is a fic idea, particularly when there’s actual work you’re supposed to be doing!”, [this photo](http://annundriel.tumblr.com/post/156596316797/asthmas-tanner-wendell-stewart-frozen-nordegg) came across my dash, and for some reason my brain immediately said “Derek Hale as a landscape photographer” and things kind of snowballed from there. So, step one, go look at that photo, because it’s relevant to the fic. Then read. I’ll wait.
> 
> (I also encourage you to go look at [that photographer’s 500px page](https://500px.com/tannerwendell) as well, because it’s excellent.)

Stiles didn’t claim to know a lot about art. Sure, he could fake it with the best of them; he’d spent many, many hours listening to Lydia’s opinions about new artists she’d agreed to represent at her gallery, not to mention her more scathing commentary on artists she found overhyped by reviewers. Mostly, though, he just ended up coming in when she had a new show going up and hung stuff as directed. (And then maybe attended the opening and seeded conversations with some of her key phrases. He wasn’t proud. There was free food.)

Usually how this went was that he came by after the gallery closed, helped take the outgoing show down, moved hooks and whatnot, and helped put up the new pieces. By the time they were done, he’d have a good idea of what the artist’s style was, some sort of vague, academic appreciation of it, and no particular desire to look at any of it long-term. It was just art. But this time…

This time was different.

This time the show was all large-format photography, featuring huge, expansive, impressive landscapes. They’d finished getting them all hung a little while ago, and now Stiles was sitting in the middle of the floor feeling… well. Feeling a lot of things.

Stunned.

Small.

Both insignificant and uplifted.

Lydia’s heels echoed through the gallery as she came back out of her office, where she’d gone to collect her purse and coat. She stopped next to him and stood looking at the piece they’d hung in the center, the only one that wasn’t solely a landscape: the photographer from behind, a figure all in black, camera in hand, against an empty, snow-covered road leading toward an immense, craggy mountain range. It was a color photo, as evidenced by the slight blue-green tinge to the evergreens lining the road and climbing the mountainside, but it might as well have been in black and white.

It was simultaneously the bleakest and most peaceful thing Stiles had ever seen. A moment of frozen silence.

Stiles didn’t have very many of those.

Lydia’s fingers came to rest in Stiles’ hair. He let his shoulder lean against her leg.

“You ready to go?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah,” he said, heaving himself to his feet. “You know anything about him? The artist?”

“Derek Hale. He’s pretty reclusive. I was lucky to get him. There’s not much out there about his personal life. All the profiles of him I’ve seen have just concentrated on his work, some of the technical aspects of how he gets particular shots, that kind of thing.”

“Is he coming to the opening?”

She gave him a sharp look. “He is. Why? You never care about meeting the artists.”

He looked back at the central photograph. “I dunno. I just… really want to this time.”

“Mm-hmm. Well, don’t freak him out.”

“Hey!”

She rolled her eyes, as she pulled on her coat and nudged him toward the door. “You know how you get. You can be kind of—how to put this?—intense sometimes.”

“We’re not in high school anymore, Lydia.”

“Thank god. C’mon, let’s get some dinner.”

“Yeah, I’m starving.”

***

Stiles got to the gallery half an hour before the opening was scheduled to start, as he usually did in case Lydia needed heavy things moved. The caterers were supposed to do it, of course, but he’d learned it was better for all involved if there was someone there who was used to Lydia in perfectionist mode to act as a bit of a buffer. This was the third catering company she’d contracted with, and he didn’t want to have to live through another search if they quit, too.

This time, though, she wasn’t arguing with a caterer. Instead, she was gesturing at the other person in what appeared to be almost a conciliatory manner, which was weird enough from Lydia that he dropped his stuff hurriedly in the office and went to see what the problem was. As he got closer, he took in more details about the other person: a man, thirties-ish, strongly built, densely stubbled, and frowning. Fiercely.

“Take it down,” he said. “I shouldn’t have sent it at all.”

“But Mr. Hale,” Lydia said helplessly, as if she’d been repeating the same point over and over to no avail, “it’s the centerpiece of the show. There’s no time to rearrange the entire gallery!”

Stiles came up behind her and put a hand lightly on her back. “Hey. Take a breath. We’ve still got thirty minutes, and I’m here. I can help move stuff around, if we really need to. Putting it all up last night went entirely too smoothly, so I should have expected to have to move it all around again anyway.” He turned his attention to the artist and attempted his most charming smile. “Hi, I’m Stiles. You’re Derek Hale?”

The man gave a curt nod.

“So can I ask what the problem is?”

“That one,” Derek said, gesturing at the piece Stiles had been staring at the night before. “I need it to come down. It shouldn’t have been included.”

Lydia gave a distressed noise of exasperation.

Stiles gestured to Derek to hold his thought for a second and turned toward Lydia. “Lyds? Why don’t you walk around and see if you can come up with an alternative plan that requires moving the fewest number of pieces? Just let me talk to Mr. Hale for a few minutes, okay? We’ll make this work out somehow, I promise.”

She nodded sharply and turned on a heel, clearly deciding she couldn’t trust herself to say anything in response at the moment. He ran a hand through his hair as he watched her stalk to the other side of the room and sighed. And she said he was the one who got intense. Sometimes he hated openings.

He turned back to the artist. “Sorry, she gets a little… particular on opening nights.” He stopped and made a negating gesture. “No, that’s a lie, she’s always particular. But she’s right, in this case. This piece should absolutely be the focal point.”

Derek scowled. “No, it shouldn’t. I’m not the point. My work is. I never… This photo should never have gotten enlarged in the first place. Laura must have included it.” Stiles hadn’t thought his eyebrows could actually get more ominous, but apparently he was wrong. “I’m gonna kill her,” Derek muttered, crossing his arms.

Stiles observed his uncomfortable, drawn-in posture for a minute, considering. “Okay, look. I’m not really an art person. I’m not a critic, I don’t work for the gallery, I’m just Lydia’s friend who helps out when she needs someone taller than 5’3” who won’t quit when she inevitably snaps. But I want you to step back here, close your eyes, relax for a second, and then open them and try to look at the gallery like a visitor instead of the guy who took the pictures. Can you do that?”

Derek glared at him.

Stiles held his hands up placatingly. “I promise I will take it down if you still don’t want it shown, if you’ll just do this one thing. I swear.”

Derek nodded and took a few steps back with Stiles, until they were standing in the open center of the space. He closed his eyes, uncrossed his arms, and attempted to settle his shoulders, taking a few breaths to center himself. Stiles, in contrast, was practically holding his own in an effort to restrain himself from trying talk the guy around. He’d learned (eventually) that some points were more convincingly made if he let people get there on their own. And he really did agree with Lydia’s hanging decisions this time. There was a powerful impact to that central image, if Derek would let himself be objective enough to see it.

Slowly, Derek opened his eyes and took in the gallery as a whole. When he finally let his eyes rest on the image in question again, all he said was, “Oh.”

Stiles let out his breath. “Yeah. Oh.”

Derek turned away from the photo, like he couldn’t take looking at it for very long, even objectively. He crossed his arms again.

Stiles reached out and touched his arm briefly, drawing back as Derek’s intense gaze met his. “You can see it, right? They won’t be seeing _you_. They’ll be seeing…” He floundered, hand circling in the air as he searched for words. “That isn’t you in the photo anymore. You’re just a, an archetype. The Viewer. Every landscape in here is amazing, but _that_ piece is the one that emphasizes just how stunning they all are, because a person, an actual person, stood there and saw that view, and somehow managed to capture it and bring it back. And _that photo_ is the one that shows what it must have been like to do it. To stand there. It isn’t you in that photo anymore. It’s them. For at least a few seconds, it’s them.”

Derek stood there blinking at Stiles. This was, Stiles had to admit, not an uncommon reaction to him, though he honestly hadn’t even been talking for that long this time. At least the furrows between Derek’s eyebrows had smoothed out. The rest of his expression wasn’t giving a lot of clues, though, causing Stiles to shift his weight nervously from foot to foot.

“So, uh, what do you think? Does it stay up, or do you want me to take it down?”

Derek blinked again and seemed to snap back to himself. “It stays,” he conceded gruffly.

Stiles grinned. “Great! Just let me go tell Lydia. Do you need anything? Water? Uh, something else? I’m not sure what the caterers have out yet, but I could check.”

“Is there somewhere I can make a phone call?”

“Yeah, sure, the back rooms are just through there. I’ll be right back.” Stiles flashed one last smile at him before hurrying over to Lydia.

“Crisis averted! Everything’s fine now. We don’t have to move anything.”

“How did you manage that? I thought he was about to rip the damn thing down himself.”

Stiles shrugged. “I just talked to him. Do you need me to do anything else?”

She tapped one manicured nail on pursed lips for a second. “No. No, tonight you’re the artist wrangler.”

Stiles was momentarily taken aback, but his rule for dealing with opening nights was whatever Lydia wanted, Lydia got. “Okay. Sure.”

“Good. Now go away. I have to deal with the caterers.”

Stiles winced, but went.

***

And that was how Stiles found himself spending the whole evening with Derek. Who appeared to be using Stiles as a social shield. Not that Stiles minded. He just did what he usually did for Lydia at events like this, except instead of making sure the other person didn’t yell at anyone, he was making sure he didn’t glare murderously at innocent people and actually strung as many as three words together in answer to questions.

After politely dealing with six gallery patrons in a row, though, Stiles could see the cracks beginning to show, so he let Derek fade toward a corner and handed him a glass of wine.

“How do you usually deal with these things?” he asked curiously.

“I mostly just try to get out of them,” Derek muttered down at his wine. “Laura said I wasn’t allowed to skip out in a new market area.”

“So who’s Laura?”

“My sister. Also my agent.”

“Ah,” Stiles nodded sagely. “So you’re double-screwed.”

Derek actually cracked a smile at that and some of the tension left his shoulders. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, I’m glad you came.”

Derek looked out at the crowded room for a long moment, then over at Stiles. “Me, too,” he replied with a much warmer smile.

“Do you want to get dinner after this?” Stiles blurted out.

Derek raised an eyebrow. “I thought there were caterers,” he said blandly.

Stiles blushed and waved a hand. “Dessert, then. Whatever. I don’t know about you, but I never get enough to eat at these things.”

Derek ducked his head and smiled at the floor. “Yes, I would love to get dinner with you.”

Stiles beamed and bumped shoulders with him gently. “Awesome. Now let’s get back out there.”

“Yeah, okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> I realize I am tempting fate by posting another meet cute, but I swear this one is done. There is no more. You will have to imagine their subsequent dinner and happily ever after. Let's just all assume that Stiles has a portable profession and starts blissfully accompanying Derek on his photography trips and they live happily and adventurously ever after. Yes, good.
> 
> (Edit: I lied. There's a second part now.)


End file.
